A report is making the rounds that the U.S. Department of Defense has plans to purchase a huge number of Apple gadgets. According to the report, the DOD plans to purchase 650,000 iOS devices to replace older BlackBerry devices (the Department of Defense currently has about 470,000 BlackBerry devices in use daily).

The DOD is tipped to be purchasing 120,000 iPads, 100,000 iPad minis, 200,000 iPod Touches, and over 20,000 iPhones.

According to TechCrunch, "More than half are headed to the battlefield, afloat, and to associated support commands. Most of the rest will stay [at the Pentagon]."

According to the DOD, it will have 8 million smartphones in service over the next three years. In addition, devices used by the Department of Defense for classified data handling are modified for enhanced security with components that can quadruple their final cost.

The Department of Defense announced last year that BlackBerry would not have the exclusive contract for smartphone devices any longer. The Defense Department is seeking to become "device agnostic" with the goal of allowing soldiers and administrators to share data amongst devices more easily.

I can't wait until they do this, without going through the bid generation process. I'll turn it in for fraud/waste/abuse!

I swear, only the DoD could be so callous as to tell its workers they're being furloughed, and losing 20% of their paychecks for the remainder of the fiscal year, then turn around and talk about buying a billion dollars worth of Apple products!